Rick moved and changed his address with his credit card company, CItibank, but didn’t change it with the bank’s rewards program vendor. No problem: just put in a different shipping address when he placed the order, right? Not exactly. Now the company’s best option is for him to wait for the package to be sent to the address where he no longer lives, complain of non-delivery, and wait for a new package to come. This seems a bit inefficient.

Rick writes:

I obtained a Citibank credit card a few years ago and moved about three years ago. I, of course, changed my mailing address with Citibank, but did not with their rewards partner. I found this out when I finally decided to redeem some of my rewards points tonight and it asked me to confirm my mailing address– it was the old address.

No problem, of course, because I simply put in a different shipping address and finished the order. At the confirmation page, however, it indicated that the order would be shipped to my old address in Wisconsin… roughly 1500 miles away from me. I immediately called their customer service line and explained my problem. The rep told me that this would be no problem; she would get a supervisor to cancel the order and we would place a new one. And then the line went dead; my cell phone had dropped the call.

So I called back and got a new rep. I again explained the problem and was told that there was nothing they could do as the vendor had accepted the order and the item would be shipped out tomorrow. She took my new address, but told me that the vendor may or may not receive the information in time to make the change. I asked about canceling and I was told again that nothing could be done as the vendor had accepted the order. I argued (politely) that very little time had passed between when I received confirmation of said order and when I got her on the phone, but she held her ground that the order was out of their hands and nothing whatsoever could be done about it.

During this time I also look online at my account and the order status is “In Progress,” which the website indicates is different from “Processed,” which means that the order is finalized. I asked to speak with a supervisor and she told me that she would do it for me. I waited on hold and then it was reiterated that nothing could be done, although I did get a confirmation number regarding my change of address.

Somewhat dumbfounded, I hung up. And a few minutes later called back to see if someone else told me the same thing. This time the rep told me that he could cancel the order and would have to get a supervisors help. I wait on hold and he comes back, apologizes for leaving me on hold and tells me it will just be a few more minutes. Then he comes back again and tells me that he had spoken with one of his fellow caseworkers and she told him that nothing could be done! Could this have been the same person I had just been speaking to?

His solution was to wait 10 days from now, then call back to complain that it hadn’t been delivered and they would send me a new one, which seems rather dubious if the person living in my old house decides they would like to have a new external drive that the heavens deposited upon their doorstep.

If the package were sent via UPS or Fedex, with a tracking number he could try to intercept the package and have it sent to the correct place. Otherwise, there’s not much else we can advice here: other than advising other readers to change their addresses before placing orders from any e-commerce site.

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